


extraordinary

by raisindeatre



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: (but also... not really), Awkwardness, College AU, F/M, Miraculous Ladybug AU, Modern AU, Snark, because how did I as a human being ever live before this, just a good old love square, puns, superhero au, there are no kwamis or akumas here, without knowing the delicious-exquisite-wrenching PAIN of a love square
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-11
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-10-02 17:58:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10223903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raisindeatre/pseuds/raisindeatre
Summary: The Painted Lady is tilting her head back to look up at the sky, and the sight of the waves of her chestnut hair spilling over her shoulders and down her back, the sight of her graceful throat outlined in the starlight – that’s just as much a part of the skyline he knows and loves as any of the rooftops surrounding them, any of the peaks and valleys of Ba Sing Se.My vigilante queen, he thinks.My shadow partner. Girl of water and mist. The only person in the world who knows me.Or: College is hard enough without having to save the city in your spare time. Andlifeis hard enough without a love square getting in the way.





	

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This might possibly be the dumbest idea I've ever had for this ship but listen...I couldn't not. Life's been a little rough for me lately, and writing this fic really helped me get through it. 
> 
> Anyway, I wrote that this was Miraculous Ladybug-inspired, and it is, but only loosely, so you needn't have watched it to understand (and hopefully enjoy) this fic. There are no superpowers here, no kwamis, no akuma, but there is a love square, because I cannot believe that I managed to make it this far without having ever written one. All the potential for angst! All the potential for laughs! Truly a dynamic made for me.
> 
> Let the love square commence!

It probably isn’t all that normal, to be watching a bank robbery in progress and to feel _hopeful_ about it, but in all fairness, if the Blue Spirit had been normal, he probably wouldn’t be here watching a bank robbery in progress anyway.

           

Sure, there are other emotions flickering through his mind at the moment: anticipation and tension and wariness, as he catalogues every movement the bank robbers make beneath him, but beneath all that is undeniably a tiny flicker of hope – one that sparks into something warm and bright in his chest when the shingles of the roof rattle quietly as she lands lightly by his side, as her arm brushes his.

           

“Hello, Blue,” she says, and because he knows she can’t see his face under the mask he wears, he lets himself grin.

           

“My Lady,” he replies, turning his head to glance at her. She looks the same as she always does, bare shoulders peeking out from the flowing red dress she wears, the panels of gauze veiling her face so that he can just barely make out the tip of her nose, the gleam of her eyes – but then she tilts her head at him, and he thinks he can see her smile back. “It’s been a while.”

           

“Sorry about that,” she says. “I had some stuff going on – but that can wait. What are we looking at here, Blue?”

           

“Well, it _appears_ to be a bank robbery, My Lady.”

           

“I’d guessed that much by myself, funnily enough. You know what I mean. Stats?”

           

“I’m not too sure, but I think at the most there are about six or seven of them down there. One driver in the car by the alley next door, engine running.”

           

“Okay. Standard procedure? Divide and conquer?”

           

“You got it. You wanna take this side? There’s a skylight just over there where you can go in. I’ll come in from the East Hall, after I take out the driver.”

           

“Sure, see you – wait, how do you know which one is the East Hall?”

           

“See that sign that says ‘Bank of Ba Sing Se, East Hall?’ I don’t know about you, but I think that may be a _bit_ of a giveaway that that way is east – “

           

“Keep snarking like that, Blue, and you’ll feel my foot coming in from the South.”

           

He laughs out loud at that, shaking his head. _I’ve missed you_ , is what he wants to say, but she bumps his shoulder with hers, straightening her spine. “See you on the other side, Blue,” she says, and he salutes her, turning to run across the rooftop.

           

The Blue Spirit slides down a drainpipe, landing lightly behind the car half-hidden in the dark alley next to the bank. He can tell the getaway driver is anxious; he keeps tapping his fingers against the steering wheel, craning his head to glance out the window. Then shouts erupt from inside the bank, and smoke begins to flow out from the windows, and he bolts upright.

           

“ _Shit_ ,” the driver hisses, fumbling to pull on the handbrake and speeding away – or so he would have, if the Blue Spirit hadn’t dived forward and slashed at the car tires with the dao swords he pulls from his back. The car rumbles and manages to make it a full two metres before tilting on its side, the air hissing out from its tires. The driver’s pale face looks out at the Blue Spirit through the windscreen, eyes wide.

           

“Were you really going to just bail and leave your friends behind?” the Blue Spirit says, shaking his head. He opens the car door and pulls the terrified man out by the collar easily, dumping him on the ground. “Honestly. No sense of honour at all.”

           

For a moment the getaway driver tenses, eyes darting to the entrance of the alley behind him as if he’s about to make a run for it, but then the Blue Spirit shifts his weight casually, letting the moonlight gleam off the blade he’s pointing at the man’s throat – and from there, well, it’s easy enough for the man’s compliance to let the Blue Spirit tie him up.

           

The Blue Spirit pats the man on the cheek, gently, and then glances over his shoulder as a tremendous crash rings out from the bank. “Oops. Gotta go. Unlike _some_ people, I don’t leave my friends behind in the lurch.”

           

Then he’s on his feet and sprinting, hurtling through the doors of the East Hall (the locks of which he’d already picked while waiting for the Painted Lady to show up), running right into the smoke that fills the building. He’s long become familiar with his partner’s methods of smoke and mirrors – although he has no idea how she does it, no idea where she manages to stash all the little sachets of chemicals she draws out to hurl on the floor and release the mist that conceals them – so despite the instinctive panic that sets in, he makes sure to keep his eyes narrowed even against the slits in his mask, makes sure to keep his breaths deep and steady.

           

He tilts his head, listening – and there! The sound of muttered curses, footsteps stumbling towards him, the outlines of two men emerging from the smoke. He sees them a heartbeat before they see him, and pounces.

           

A blast of water shoots past him, sending the flailing form of a man careening past, and the Blue Spirit shakes his head, devoting his attention to trussing up the two thieves at his feet. That’s another thing he’s never quite managed to figure out – how exactly she managed to procure the guns that let her fire a blast of water capable of sending a man flying twenty feet backwards. The Blue Spirit prefers a good, solid length of steel any day, but even he has to admit that it’s impressive. Not that he’ll say that to her, of course.

           

(“So… basically it’s a water gun,” he’d said to her once, months ago.

           

“It’s a very dangerous hydraulic-powered weapon,” she’d retorted.

           

“’A dangerous hydraulic-powered weapon’. Hey, I think I heard that once on TV. Yeah, on one of those Nerf Blaster ads.”

           

“Oh, that’s big talk coming from someone whose superhero initials are literally B.S.”)

           

“Hey, there you are,” the Painted Lady says to him now as he makes his way over to where she is kneeling by the dazed man, expertly looping the coil of rope around his wrists and ankles. “Took you long enough. What happened, were you monologue-ing again just now?”

           

“I have no idea,” he replies haughtily, “what you’re talking about.”

           

She secures the last of the knots, yanking tightly. “Sure you don’t. Listen, I heard sirens earlier. I think the police are on their way – we’d better get these boys outside.”

           

“Okay. The rest of them are…?”

           

“Taken care of,” she says, and grins at him from under her hat, and his heart does not, does not, it definitely does _not_ skip a beat.

           

They roll the thieves outside, so that when the police arrive, blue and red lights filling the air as the sirens wail, all they find are eight very bedraggled would-be bank robbers propped up against the wall, all trussed up like chickens. The Blue Spirit and the Painted Lady wait just long enough for one policeman to step out of his car and crane his head to look up at the rooftops, for his eyes to widen in amazement as they salute him. Then they turn and run lightly across the shingles, jumping from one rooftop to another, weaving their way around chimneys and skylights and satellites in the easy, seamless grace of a dance long waltzed together.

           

(They never talk to the cops. Hell, for the longest time when she’d first turned up, about six months after he’d first started this whole vigilante thing, he hadn’t even talked to _her_. He’d been confused, and wary, and determined to keep his distance from this strange girl – who on earth decided to fight criminals in a dress, for crying out loud? – but at one jewellery store robbery she’d sent one man flying backwards with her water gun and declared, “I have the right to remain violent!” and yeah, okay. He’d laughed, and that was really when everything between them had started.)

           

By unspoken consent, they make their way to Ba Sing Se’s clock tower, the highest point of the city, and when they settle themselves at the very top and look over the edge at the thousands of lights beneath them, the Blue Spirit feels himself relax, really relax, for the first time all day. The Painted Lady is tilting her head back to look up at the sky, and the sight of the waves of her chestnut hair spilling over her shoulders and down her back, the sight of her graceful throat outlined in the starlight – that’s just as much a part of the skyline he knows and loves as any of the rooftops surrounding them, any of the peaks and valleys of Ba Sing Se. 

           

“I didn’t think you’d come,” he says quietly, after a while. “Tonight, I mean.”

           

She winces – he can see it, even beneath the misty gauze that obscures her face. “I know. I… I’m sorry I’ve been MIA lately. There’s just been a lot happening.”

           

“You said,” he says, but she doesn’t elaborate, and he doesn’t know why there’s a sharp stab of disappointment in his chest. They aren’t really friends, the two of them. He doesn’t even know her name. But he can’t deny that lately, there’s been something in the way his heart skips whenever she’s around. (Something in the way the breath catches in his throat when she smiles and says, affection threaded all throughout her voice, “ _Hello, Blue_.”)

           

“Well,” the Blue Spirit says, trying to cut through the awkward silence, “you more than made up for it tonight. You took out, what? Four bad guys? Five? And in record time, too!”

           

“Oh, well, that was easy enough. All I had to do was imagine each of them with my ex-boyfriend’s face, and BAM! It was a pretty good incentive.”

           

If he had been anyone else, the Blue Spirit might just have lost his footing with the surprise her statement evokes; if he had been anyone else, he might just have slithered down the shingles of the slanted roof of the clock tower. But he is the Blue Spirit; he has weathered high-speed car chases and guns pointed at him from bank robbers and explosions from structures rigged with bombs, so he doesn’t even turn his head.

           

“Oh? I didn’t know you had a boyfriend,” he says, trying to keep his voice steady.

           

“Well, I don’t _anymore_. Weren’t you listening?”

           

He huffs out a breath that might just pass for a laugh, and then she asks him, head tilted, “Hey. Do _you_ have a girlfriend?”

           

“No.”

           

“Oh.”

           

“I have _many_.”

           

Her laughter rings out in the night, and he is absurdly glad for it, glad even for the elbow she nudges into his side. “I’m serious!”

           

He shakes his head, smiling a little. “No. No, I don’t have a girlfriend.”

           

“I get it. Relationships are hard, huh?”

           

“Is that what you meant earlier? When you said that a lot had been going on?”

           

“Partly,” she sighs. “I mean, there’s also been a lot of other stuff, but yeah. Partly. Breakups aren’t fun.”

           

“Tell me about it.”

           

They are quiet for a while longer, and then she says suddenly, her voice strange and unfamiliar, “I just…”

           

He turns towards her. “Just?”

           

She shakes her head a little, and he realizes that she looks sad, now, in a way he isn’t used to seeing. Something about the way she bites her lip, the way her eyes glitter beneath the wide brim of her hat makes him want to pull her into his arms. He’s yanked her back from rooftop edges, barrelled her out of the way out of firing bullets, but he’s never ever _held_ her, not really.

           

“I just,” she repeats, “wish someone would know me, you know? Me. As I am. The good and the bad.” She laughs, a little, but the sound is brittle. “God. I mean, that wasn’t even the real reason we broke up. There were lots of other reasons. But I just wish… that someone would _see_ me. That someone would _know_ me, _all_ of me.”

           

The Blue Spirit doesn’t quite know what to say. “I guess it _would_ suck,” he says at last, “if you couldn’t tell your boyfriend that you run across rooftops delivering justice in your spare time. I mean, there are hobbies, and then there’s… Well. Vigilantism.”

           

“Yeah.”

           

“For what it’s worth…” he says hesitantly, then pushes resolutely through. “ _I_ know you. You don’t have to hide that part of yourself from me.”

           

“That’s just it, though, Blue,” she says. “You only know _that_ part of me. Sometimes I think…” She hesitates, there in the silver moonlight, and then she says in a rush, “Sometimes I think you might know me better than anyone. You definitely know parts of me that no one else does, but also… You _don’t_ know me. Not really.”

           

“I do, though,” he argues, and he doesn’t know why this feels like such an important point to make, but it does. It feels like he’ll lose more than just this argument if he concedes.

           

“You don’t even know my name.”

           

 _No_ , he wants to say, _I don’t know your name. I don’t know your favourite colour. I don’t know how old you are. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know_ you.

           

_I know that you always seem a little more alive when there’s a full moon out, a little faster, a little sharper. I know that you love it when it rains, even when it makes everything so much harder – the rooftops made more treacherous, the roads more slippery. I know that you’re the bravest person I know, the smartest, the funniest._

           

“No, I don’t know your name,” the Blue Spirit admits. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t know _you_ , my Lady. You said it yourself – that I might know you better than anyone, and I think that’s true. I know it’s true for me, anyway,” he adds awkwardly. “That you know me better than anyone else, I mean.”

           

“But I _don’t_ ,” she says, chin jutting out stubbornly. “How can you say that when I don’t even know your _name_ , Blue? When I don’t even know what you look like?” 

           

He doesn’t say anything to that, and she sighs, reaching up to adjust her hat. “That’s what I mean,” she says gently. “It’s not a bad thing! And I’m not saying that you don’t know things about me no one else does. That’s obvious; you’re the only person who knows me as the Painted Lady. I’m just saying that… well, you _only_ know me as the Painted Lady. And it’s strange, because that’s something _nobody else_ knows, but in a way it makes you just the same as _everybody else_.”

           

“And what does that mean?” he says dully; it shouldn’t, but the phrase _everybody else_ sends something sharp shooting through his chest. He thought – well. He thought he was more special to her than that. 

           

“I guess…” she says tiredly, “that in a way you see me like they do. Like I’m just… this really good person. That I can’t do anything wrong. But I’m not, Blue. I’m not a hero. I’m not a saint. I’m just a person. You only look at me and see everything good, like everybody else in my life does.”

           

 _That’s where we’re different, you and I_ , he wants to say, but doesn’t. _Everyone in my life takes one look at me and sees everything bad._

           

And he wonders then, if this is why he thinks he might love her, because she looks at him and sees only a hero. He doesn’t have a scar, or a tragic backstory, or a father who hates him. As the Blue Spirit, he’s wittier than he is as Zuko, faster and bolder and more confident – so does that make him _more_ himself, or _less_ so? Is it the real him the Painted Lady knows, or just the persona he wears?

           

What does it really mean to know someone? To love them?

           

He closes his eyes behind his mask, and then startles a little when she rests her hand on his shoulder, her touch warm through the dark shirt he wears. “Look, I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to get mad. I don’t even really know what I’m saying. Forget it, okay? I’m just… I’m just really tired.”

           

“It’s okay,” he says. “I get it. Getting dumped can be exhausting.”

           

She huffs out a breath indignantly, digging her elbow lightly into his ribs. “Cheek! If you must know, _I_ dumped _him_.”

           

“Sure you did, my Lady,” he says, half-tired, half-amused. “Sure you did.”

           

The quiet stretches out between them a while longer, the Blue Spirit running his eyes methodically along the tiny little lights spread out below them, the way he knows she is doing as well, through the gauze that flutters around her face. He knows he wouldn’t really be able to tell if something were to happen from up here – that’s what the (illegally obtained) police transmitter in his pocket is for – but it makes him feel better anyway, to watch over his city like this.

           

“I know I’ve been MIA,” the Painted Lady says suddenly, “but for what it’s worth, I was keeping an eye on you. And… well. You seemed to be doing fine on your own.”

           

And for some reason, the thought lances through him like rain falling into the ocean, all silver and blue, the thought of her sitting at a table reading the newspaper headlines, maybe, or watching the news on the television. The thought of her curled up on a ratty couch – and why not make the upholstery tartan, why not throw in a couple of potted ferns, here in this student apartment where he is suddenly imagining her – rich brown hair tumbling around her shoulders, the light from the television playing across her features as the news anchor reports another victory for Ba Sing Se’s vigilante, another story of bad guys thrown into jail – the thought of all that makes his throat ache, suddenly. It makes him miss her, which is stupid, not least because she’s sitting right next to him.

           

“I was,” he says at last, “but that doesn’t mean I’m not glad you’re back now. Because I am. Glad, I mean.”

           

“Me too, Blue,” she says, and not for the first time he is glad for the mask he wears. It means that he can close his eyes just for a moment, just for a breath. _My vigilante queen_ , he thinks. _My shadow partner. Girl of water and mist. The only person in the world who knows me_. “Me too.”

 

* * *

 

_What would Uncle do?_

           

It’s not really a philosophy Zuko likes to practice in his daily life, as much as he loves the old man. It’s nothing personal; it’s just that usually, that question can be answered with _make tea_ , or play _pai sho_ , neither of which are ever really applicable. But right now, following in Iroh’s footsteps seems like best course of action.

           

(A better one than thinking _What would the Blue Spirit do?_ anyway. Zuko already knows the answer to that question – it’s _get out the dao swords and point them in Jet’s direction_ , which, you know. Wouldn’t be all that good for the whole secret-identity thing.)

           

 _What would Uncle do?_ Zuko can already hear the old man’s voice. _Nephew_ , the Iroh in his head says sagely, _bitterness is like a cancer. It eats upon the host, but does nothing to the object of its displeasure. Better to air out all the grievances now, before the cancer takes root._

           

“Okay, okay,” Zuko says to himself. “Okay.” He straightens up, looking into the mirror. “Jet.” He clears his throat. “Jet. Listen. I know we’ve only been roommates for three days, and that classes haven’t even started yet, but I feel it’s important that we get this out of the way now.”

           

And, god, he may have felt stupid earlier, but now it feels oddly freeing to say all this aloud. Zuko throws his shoulders back. “You drink all the orange juice out of the carton – and then you put the carton back in the fridge. What the hell, man? Who does that? And don’t forget the time you left the bathroom lights on all night – you know the rent doesn’t cover the electricity bill, right? And yeah, we’ve only been roommates for three days, but you’ve spent almost the whole of those three days on the phone arguing with your girlfriend – “

           

“Ex-girlfriend.”

           

“Ex-girlfriend,” Zuko agrees, and then freezes. _What would Uncle do?_ Zuko is never, never, never taking his advice again. For a moment that stretches out for far too long, he doesn’t move at all, as if by not turning around he can just ignore the presence he feels – now, when it’s a little too late – humming at his back. But for better or for worse, Zuko has always faced things head-on, so eventually he takes a deep breath and turns slowly around.

           

A girl is leaning against the doorway to his room, a box in her arms, and Zuko isn’t shallow, okay, but he _is_ self-aware enough to know that this whole situation wouldn’t be so _mortifying_ if she wasn’t also absolutely gorgeous: all long legs and rich brown hair and blue eyes smiling at him. 

           

They stand there in awkward silence for several moments, until her smile starts to slip. “Sorry. The, uh, the door to your apartment wasn’t locked, so I thought it would be okay if I came inside.”

           

“Hngh,” Zuko says.

           

“So I guess you could also put that on your list of why Jet’s a bad roommate. Forgets to lock doors.”

           

“Hngh.”

           

She bites her lip fleetingly. “Look, I’m sorry. It’s just… listen, when you hear someone who sounds like they’re practicing to break up with your ex-boyfriend, it’s kind of natural to want to listen in, you know?”

           

 _Say something, Zuko_. Not for the first time today, Zuko wishes, more than anything, that he could put his mask on. The Blue Spirit would know what to say. The Blue Spirit has a comeback for every situation, would have a ready retort already in his mouth, clever and wry. But right now he’s just Zuko, so instead he says slowly, “Uh. I guess I wouldn’t know.”

           

The girl grins at him. “I guess not. But hey, if it helps, I thought that was a pretty good list. Especially the orange juice thing. God, that drove me crazy.”

           

“Yeah. It’s really annoying. And when I told him to buy some more, he went and bought the orange juice with the pulp.”

           

“I _know_!” she exclaims. “What is with that? I can’t stand pulp in orange juice!”

           

“The work of the Devil,” Zuko says. “So. Uh. Is that why you broke up with him?”

           

“Oh, yeah,” she says easily. “Orange juice pulp was what drove us apart in the end. You might even say it was… pulp friction.” 

           

He groans, and she laughs aloud, delightedly, and – this isn’t a movie, it’s not like the awkwardness between them has just magically disappeared, but something in the air does seem lighter, somehow. It seems – and Zuko has no idea why this is the word that pops into his head – _familiar_ , somehow.

           

“Nah,” the girl says, shifting the box in her arms. “There were a lot of reasons. It would’ve ended sooner or later, and I thought it would be better if it was sooner. Call me crazy, but I wanted to start my first year of college on a nice note, without anything hanging over me.”

           

“So you’re a first-year,” Zuko repeats. That would explain why he’s never seen her around before – because believe him, he would definitely have remembered her.

           

“Just moved into the student dorms yesterday. First year of college, first time living away from home, first time breaking up with someone… it’s been crazy. There’s been a lot going on.”

           

“Sounds like it,” Zuko says. “Well.” He hesitates. “Welcome to BSSU, I guess.”

           

“Thanks. Hey, what’s your name, anyway?”

           

“Zuko. What’s yours?”

           

She opens her mouth to answer when a rattling noise comes from behind her, and when she turns to glance over her shoulder, startled – that sense of recognition is there again, tugging at his sleeve, whispering in his ear. There’s something about the sight of her profile – the tip of her nose, the curve of her chin – that feels almost maddeningly familiar. Like a half-forgotten memory, or like a dream.

           

“I should go,” she says. “I don’t want to bump into Jet. I really only came to drop off the last of his stuff.” She goes out into the living room as he follows her, puts the box on the coffee table and turns to leave, before stopping. “Oh, sorry. I just completely ignored you there, for a second, huh?”

           

She turns, and suddenly they are face-to-face, very close. Her eyes are very, very blue. “I’m Katara.”

           

“Katara,” he says, and his voice is hoarse. “It’s nice to meet you.”


End file.
